You will never realize the full potential of something if you don't understand its power. Often, we miss out on something amazing, not because we lack access to it, but because we have no idea of its value in our hands. 

Over the past few months, we've been addressing frequently asked questions on our social media platforms, addressing common inquiries from both our existing and potential clients. While this has been going well, we've inadvertently overlooked something fundamental to our work: SharePoint! 

Could it be that you don't recognize the value of partnering with GTconsult because you don’t see the potential of SharePoint? Or perhaps you're on board with SharePoint but aren't sure how to maximize its capabilities? This blog is tailored just for you, and GT is the company you need in your corner! 

Key SharePoint Concepts

To better grasp SharePoint's functionality, let's use the analogy of a home.

Think of SharePoint as a home with a family living in it, where the members of your organization represent the members of that family. 

Think of the cupboards, drawers in your home; there's a place for everything and for everything there is a place. This helps you find things easily, you're not looking for a spoon in the cutlery drawer or finding toiletries in the pantry.

Libraries in SharePoint are repositories where you store and manage your documents and files. They are essential for document management, version control, and collaboration. A library can be thought of as a digital filing cabinet.

Document Libraries 

These are the most common types of libraries, used for storing documents such as Word files, PDFs, spreadsheets, and more.

List Libraries

Lists are used for managing data that isn't necessarily document-based, such as tasks, issues, contacts, or events.

Assets Libraries

These libraries are specialized for managing media files like images and videos.

With this one, we would be reaching if we tried to link the analogy. So, I guess that’s the only difference. You can’t take your home with you everywhere you go, but SharePoint is accessible on various devices and platforms, ensuring that users can access their content and collaborate from anywhere.  And don’t forget to check out our Info Mailers that push the most relevant content to the right people in each department at the right time. 

2. SharePoint improvements  

• Simpler authoring - introducing Copilot in SharePoint, a new SharePoint home page, and coauthoring experiences.  You’ll be able to use natural language and AI to author SharePoint pages faster and easier and collaborate with others in real time.
• Compelling content - SharePoint is getting a major aesthetic update.  You’ll be able to create visually stunning sites and pages that embrace images and videos in new ways to express your brand.
• Deeper engagement – with new integrations for SharePoint into email, Teams, and Microsoft Viva, you’ll be able to rely on SharePoint to meet your readers where they work and measure the impact of your content.
• Flexible platform – with continued investment in templates, the SharePoint Framework, and Microsoft Graph, your existing solutions will continue to work even as we update the user experience, so you’ll be able to continue to tailor your SharePoint sites to specific workflows and integrate them with custom applications.

Day 1

The first day of the conference was dedicated to full day tutorials. Our team decided to go to the SharePoint Framework (SPFx) session by Paolo Pialorsi. SPFx is a library that allows developers to develop customisable web parts which can be deployed into SharePoint, Teams, Viva Connections and even Outlook. We also discussed the PnP community and some of the cool SPFx solutions which have been developed there that are already publicly available. Our newfound knowledge paired with the experience of Chad Carlse – an experienced SPFx developer who has just joined the A-Team should lead to some new and interesting apps in the next couple of months.

Day 2

The day started with a Key Note speech from the Microsoft product managers. They talked about some of the new technologies that have been developed recently including:

·  Teams scheduled messaging – which is going to very useful for teams with members in different time zones as well as organisations with flexible working hours.

·  Microsoft Loop – a widget that can be inserted into Teams chats or Outlook that allows users to create lists collaboratively in real time. It will be ideal for putting together lists  on the fly during meetings.

·  Syntex – Microsofts new document e-signing tool. Though less flexible than some of the existing 3^rd party solutions (such as Adobe or Docusign), the fact that this is a Microsoft product has perks – licencing is managed in one place and integration between other products on the Microsoft Suite is easier to setup. Our team will be paying close attention for new features for this product.

We also enjoyed a session about list formatting. Marijn Somers went through everything from user friendly options that we could introduce to our clients to develop themselves to more complicated examples that use JSON objects to configure the styling of the lists and columns. We even went through some github repositories that showed off the high level of flexibility and extensibility of this feature.

Day 2 also marked the start of the Vendor Expo for all sponsors of the event. Craig and Annie were managing our booth and met tonnes of participants from the conference. It was great to get to interact with the community and meet some potential clients and partners.

Day 3

The highlight of day 3 was a session with Vlad Catrinescu. He explained how the Power Virtual Agent can be used to develop Teams chat bots. The technology is easy to pick up for anyone familiar with Power Automate and can allow developers to quickly build chat bots as a solution to quickly disseminate information or complete simple tasks (through Power Automate).

In the evening we went to the party in Copenhagen city. The party was a circus themed dinner with singing, dancing and circus performers who put together a great show! We enjoyed the show, the food and the conversations with the people at our table.

Day 4

On the final day of the conference, we went to 2 talks about search both hosted by Mikael Svenson. The first was the Search API and how it can be extended using graph to search throughout an entire tenant as well as the potential risks with creating such a solution. The second session focused on the PnP search web part which is currently the best way to all of the functionality of search on Modern SharePoint. Though the A-Team is using the solution for most intranets that we build we learnt a few tricks that we can’t wait to implement.

You can find us as stand 38, very close to the community area, where we will most certainly have one the best prizes this year.  As we are GT, we thought it would be fitting to have a GT race set as a prize to the tournament winner.  How do you win, well its pretty straight forward, head round to the stand, say hi to the team and enter the competition.  Each day make sure to come back to challenge the winners from the previous day for the top spot.  The winner on the final day goes home with the prize.

We look forward to seeing our clients, partners and all the attendees at the event.  Please come past the stand and see how we can assist you with our A Team managed services.  And if you want to book time with Craig Tarr our CEO who will be very keen on sharing a meal of local brew and Smørrebrød in the beautiful city of Copenhagen you can do that by booking his time below.

The Power Pages site was down right now, probably due to the entire internet checking it out. 

Draw an idea on a napkin, take a pic of it, and transform that into a Power App in minutes.  That’s right, you can do it with Express Design. 

3.  Project Volterra

4.  Live Share in Microsoft Teams

5.  Mesh for Teams